Like some karmic counter-balance to the dominance of stealth archers in the Elder Scrolls games, FromSoftware's fantasy RPGs have historically reduced bows to unimpressive damage-dealers or cheese weapons with some status effect utility. This is also true in Elden Ring, where even the best bow builds tend to struggle compared to simpler melee or magic builds. This of course means that a sub-par bow will really underperform, so it follows that a bow-only character that can't use arrows would have a devil of time.
Such is the crux of the latest ridiculous Elden Ring challenge run from YouTuber and Twitch streamer Bushy, who's made a career out of beating FromSoftware's open-world epic in the silliest, most difficult ways you can imagine. The title of Bushy's latest video, 'I beat Elden Ring with only a bow without arrows,' is perfectly accurate, but for my money it doesn't quite convey the sheer absurdity of the challenge.
So, how do you deal damage with a bow without using arrows? Well, bows do have melee attacks in Elden Ring, or at least greatbows do. The problem is, these attacks are only available when you're riding your spiritual mount Torrent. This forced Bushy to resort to a mod that lets you ride Torrent anywhere in the game, but while that may sound like a big advantage, riding around wielding a glorified stick and without the ability to properly dodge attacks thoroughly offsets it.
Bushy's runs generally involve killing Elden Ring's core Remembrance-bearing bosses, and this not-really-a-bow character unsurprisingly ran into some problems there. Torrent can't dodge very well, so he ends up eating a lot of attacks that you could normally roll through, forcing Bushy to split his healing flasks between his attack-enabling horse and his own HP bar. The short range of the bow melee attack also requires extremely close-quarters combat, which can be especially awkward against fast or large bosses – by which I mean most bosses.
Surprisingly, this ultimately ended up being one of Bushy's easier runs. Granted, the competition consists of challenges like flaming hugs only and kicking only, which are hard to top for sheer difficulty. One silver lining is that the mounted bow melee actually deals respectable damage assuming you can connect your attacks, and that is admittedly a generous assumption to make. Likewise, while Bushy can't roll, he can run away very quickly on Torrent's back, enabling some pretty degenerate hit-and-run tactics and in some cases confusing boss AI. He's able to mostly outrun Malenia's infamous Waterfowl Dance combo attack, for example, which is a pretty big deal.
Altogether, this challenge took Bushy just over six hours to clear. To me, it's probably the clearest evidence yet that players are slowly driving themselves to madness in the wait for the Elden Ring DLC. I always regret asking this, but seriously, what's next? Playing the whole game in sickening upside-down mode, it seems. I guess the sky's the limit with mods involved, but surely we've about run Elden Ring dry at this point. Luckily, the upcoming DLC is sure to inject some new bosses, items, and areas into the game, which ought to be an oasis for weary challenge runners.
Last we heard, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is a "little ways off" but "progressing well."
